Water Bears Survive Exposure in Space

Here is an amazing article on how some tiny organisms called Water Bears survived exposure to the vacuum and UV radiation of space and lived on a European Space Agency research platform in 2007.

I highly recommend a great book titled "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. One thing I got from this book was just how tenacious life can be.  One instance is that some microbes inside a camera lens from one of the Surveyer lunar landing crafts (1967) survived after being retrieved and returned to Earth by the Apollo 12 Astronauts.  Life is tough.  IMHO, about the only way to totally wipe out all life from our planet is for the Sun to reach the red giant stage and engulf Earth.  This is not likely to happen for about 5 billion years.