They are back in space. SpaceX took 5000 of them to the International Space Station in June:
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-tardigrades-squid-space-station-study-2021-6
They can survive the vacuum of space, and to some degree, the ionizing radiation.
But they are not indestructible (fortunately, perhaps?). If shot out of a gun at a speed greater than 2000 mph (that’s faster than your normal speeding bullet) they turn to mush. Scientists tested this after an Israeli spacecraft bearing tardigrades crashed on the Moon in 2019. The study indicated that the crash would have killed them. Although without water and in their cryptobiotic “tun” state they shouldn’t have been able to proliferate, still, as the Guardian commented, “From the Moon’s point of view, this was a failed alien invasion.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/tardigrades-survive-being-shot-gun-2021-5
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/20/tardigrades-natures-great-survivors
Interestingly, the Guardian article also describes research on the tardigrade’s use of “intrinsically disordered proteins” to protect from desiccation and freezing. The significance of how proteins fold has long been recognized, as their three dimensional shape is intrinsically related to their function. In recent years great progress has been made on the protein-folding problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/science/protein-design-david-baker.html
(article by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times)
Intrinsically disordered proteins could have practical applications in medicine, the Guardian tells us, such as in the preservation of vaccines.