Ceres

Ceres (designated 1 Ceres) is the largest asteroid known (nine hundred fifty kilometres in diameter) and the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system, and the first asteroid discovered by humanity. It lies in the Asteroid Belt.

Ceres is the site of Ceres station, a space station that was one of the first sites of human colonization. Half a generation after humanity arrived there, Tycho Manufacturing managed to spin up the asteroid, which gave it a gravity of 0.3 g. The station has tens of thousands of kilometers of tunnels.

As the most important port in the Belt, the station has a population of approximately six million permanent residents with an extra one million transiting through at any given time. Eight hundred to a thousand ships are docked on Ceres every day.

Ceres is governed by Earth, and station security is handled by the private security firm Star Helix Security.

The gravity on Ceres is not provided by its own mass but is spin gravity. The level of gravity changes with each level and there is a noticeable Coriolis Effect. Transportation is provided by an extensive tube train network.

Anderson Dawes is the Ceres Station liaison of the OPA. Dawes grew up in the Belt. When he was fifteen years old, one of his four sisters died due to his negligence securing her suit seals during a mission on an asteroid outside Eros. He recruited Fred Johnson to be the spokesperson of the OPA.