Found this video about a tiny creature named Tardigrades (aka Water Bears) that can survive extreme temperatures and outer space vacuum conditions, go into extreme suspended animation to preserve themselves and so on... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W194GQ6fHI&NR=1&feature=endscreen
I remember reading about these when I was a kid. Fascinating little buggers. It's overly anthropocentric to claim humans are the "dominant" species on this planet, when we've got creatures like this living everywhere, who are a lot hardier than we are. I remember being amazed at how they could survive so long without water, and such extreme temperatures.
I know some of the people who worked for this experiment. They launched a few tardigrades in space and tested their resistance to such extreme conditions. It was pretty neat.
Tardigrades! I'm familiar with them; it's nice to see them getting some love. Actually, that whole sentence works out wrong. What I mean is, tardigrades are fascinating lifeforms that I'm always glad to see getting the attention they deserve.
Apollo 12 brought back the Surveyor 3 camera (robotic probe). Inside, scientists found bacteria that had survived 3 YEARS in the airless vacuum on the Moon. Gives credence to the fact that life could spread in meteorites.
I'm fairly sure we've known about resilient bacteria and microbiological life that can live in the harshness of space for quite some time now.