The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) will be made up of two observatories that will study planets outside our solar system. TPF will study the formation and development of planets in disks of dust and gas around newly forming stars, search for planets orbiting nearby stars, and study their suitability for life. By combining the high sensitivity of space telescopes with revolutionary imaging technologies, the TPF observatories will measure the size, temperature, and placement of planets as small as the Earth in the habitable zones of distant solar systems. In addition, TPF will allow atmospheric chemists and biologists to study the relative amounts of gases like carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone and methane to find whether a planet someday could or even now does support life. Work now being done at NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory will be used to help future missions like TPF by identifying the types of planets to look for and by identifying the components of planetary atmospheres which may indicate the existence of life.