Which Jupiter moon will reveal the most ?

Yogi Berra supposedly suggested that when you come to a fork in the road, you are supposed to take it. That's just what planetary scientists studying the rich data set from the Galileo Mission to the outer solar system are doing now. They're taking the fork.According to William B. McKinnon, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, the community suffers from an embarrassment of riches, because each of the moons of Jupiter differs in the way that they can reveal more about planets and how they behave. But he thinks it is Europa that clearly commands the most attention. There are four large, moons of Jupiter that in their character and behavior are more like planets than Earth's moon: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. The last three are icy. Io's volcanic hyperactivity is well known, but there are mysteries about the temperature of its magmas and its spectacular mountains and what they might reveal about the satellite's interior processes. As for the exterior moon Callisto, how did it acquire an ocean yet not be deeply differentiated?

Ganymede's liquid iron core is still generating a magnetic field. This was not predicted beforehand, and thus has much to teach planetary scientists on how magnetic fields are generated in the solar system. Then, there is Europa. "Of the four Galilean moons, Europa is the one that has the best chance to reveal the most about the origin of life, which is the biggest unanswered scientific question we have, bar none," he said. "With its massive body of liquid water, multiple energy sources proposed and different ways to provide carbon and other biogenic elements, the central question must be Europa's potential for life. What greater question can you ask of a planet?"
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