Hamilton Sundstrand has protested NASA's selection of a Texas company to supply the space agency's next-generation space suit.

The subsidiary of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp. and a partner company filed the protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Monday.

Company officials do not believe they got adequate information from NASA about why Hamilton Sundstrand lost out, the company said in a statement.

"Therefore, we will challenge the decision to assure ourselves that the process was conducted fairly and properly," Hamilton Sundstrand said.

The contract was awarded June 12 to Houston-based Oceaneering International Inc., best known for providing deep water services and products to the oil and gas industry.

Hamilton Sundstrand and its partner, ILC Dover of Frederica, Del., have supplied the space suits since the 1960s.

The space suit was a signature contribution by Hamilton Sundstrand to NASA, and its loss was as much a symbolic blow as a financial hit.

NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said the agency had received a copy of Hamilton Sundstrand's protest and was in the process of reviewing it.

Messages seeking comment were left with Oceaneering.

The new space suit, called an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) suit by NASA, is being developed to protect astronauts during voyages to the International Space Station and the surface of the moon, where the space agency hopes to return by 2020.

The $745 million contract has three phases and calls for a total of 109 suits, 24 of which will be the lunar suits.

Windsor Locks-based Hamilton Sundstrand and jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, another subsidiary of United Technologies, were the indirect beneficiaries of a separate challenge to the awarding of a government contract.

Boeing scored a victory June 18 in its battle to wrest a $35 billion Air Force contract from Northrop Grumman and its European partner. The Government Accountability Office upheld Boeing's protest of the refueling tanker contract and recommended a new competition.

Pratt & Whitney would build the engines for the fleet of nearly 600 tankers and Hamilton Sundstrand would work on the electrical systems.

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