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At least one tardigrade has been frozen in "a block of ice for three decades", then thawed, and gone on to reproduce. A tardigrade egg in the frozen sample also thawed, hatched, and reproduced. So it's possible.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/01/18/frozen-...

Apparently when they find themselves in an extreme environment (wet or dry?) they replace their body's water with sugar (trehalose) which doesn't crystallize and cause cellular damage when frozen.

1 comments

I read the original article, and they don't know what the conditions were when they entered cryptobiotic state:

The moss sample used in the current study most probably contained, initially at least, moisture from snowmelt in early summer, since at the time of collection they were not covered by winter snow accumulation. However, the possibility of freeze-drying during 30.5 years of frozen storage cannot be discounted, and whether the animals obtained here were hydrated or dehydrated (thus in an anhydrobiotic state) before or after storage is unknown.

My understanding (I'm a bioinformaticist, not a wet lab biologist, but I've collected tardigrades and read up on them), the process occurs in very dry conditions.

However, in good faith, I did some searching and found some pages which claim that cyrobiosis (a form of cryptobiosis that occurs in wet, cold enviornments) is exploited by tardigrades. So I guess you're right.