Ceres

Ceres is the closest Dwarf Planet to Earth.

Also Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, slightly closer to Mars' orbit. Its diameter is approximately 939.4 kilometers, making it the largest of the minor planets within the orbit of Neptune.

Ceres was the first object discovered in the asteroid belt and is named for the Roman goddess of corn and harvests.

I believe Ceres will be the next logical step for human colonisation after Mars.

View on Maps: google.com/maps/space/ceres

Average orbit distance 413,690,250km approx 3.1AU and just over a 9 hour day.

With an average radius of 476.2 km Ceres is the largest object between Mars and Jupiter.

Mass: 8.958 × 10^20 kg, containing about one-third of the total mass of the asteroid belt.

Orbital period: 1,682 days, approx every 4.6 Earth years. JPL orbit data

Surface area: 2,849,631km² , about 3 times the area of Egypt or a bit smaller than India.

Ceres gravity at 0.28m/s² is less than 3 percent of Earth's gravity.

The daytime temperature is around minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 73 degrees Celsius), and the nighttime temperature is minus 225 F (minus 143 C). But throughout Ceres's year (4.6 Earth years), you wouldn't see much seasonal temperature changes because of the object's low axial tilt (3 percent).

At a mean distance of 2.77 astronomical units Ceres is nearly three times as far away from the sun as Earth is. In the middle of Ceres's 9-hour-long day, the sun would only be about 15 percent as bright and a third as large as it would be at noon on Earth.

Ceres has a very low pressure atmosphere due to water vapor outgassing from water ice on the surface, but escapes in a very short time in the sunlight day time on Ceres.

In March 2015 the asteroid probe Dawn establish orbit around Ceres, Ceres contains large volumes of water ice.

The only outstanding feature is a single mountain, Ahuna Mons an 13,000 foot-high Ice volcano.

Ceres one day could be a target for human exploration

SpaceX BFR Cargo resources for setting up the base on Ceres would be launched from Earth followed by a shorter travel time of a human BFR flight from a Mars colony (Orbital distance Mars to Ceres approx 1.5AU) maybe as early as the 2030s.

Mars colonist would have had the unique experience in adapting and working in low gravity and bootstrapping a remote human outpost, especially with having to get used to the diet required for those living in space far from resupply from Earth. This would be the next logical step towards human exploration of the Solar System after the Earths Moon and Mars.

The 2030s timeframe assumes many improvements learnt from the Mars settlements, particularly in communications, rocketry, in situ resource management, food production techniques etc. Fuel manufactured on Mars might also be sent to Ceres unless SpaceX land a version of a BFR that uses H/Lox as a fuel that can be made from the abundance of water on Ceres, Water, Hydrogen and Oxygen may become Ceres major export. Training for asteroid miners could also be a very useful on Ceres. Ceres could become the main base and transport hub for future asteroid mining.

This outpost use as a base for Asteroide prospectors is nicely shown in this Isaac Arthur Youtube Video - Colonizing Ceres

In the new SyFy channel series "The Expanse," colonists live on a Ceres that is very different from the dwarf planet seen today.

Living off the land on Ceres may be more difficult than doing so on the Earth's moon, but it will also have advantages.

The surface is a mixture of water ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates, clay, salt and ammonia, Even organic compounds have been found in high concentration near the 32-mile-wide crater Ernutet,

If Ceres turned out to be composed of 25 percent water, it may have more water than all the freshwater on Earth.

Setting up habitats for the colonists and moving building materials with everything weighing 40 times less should help a lot, then bulldoze rocky material over the habitat to serve as a radiation shield.

Raw materials from Asteroid mining could be more pure and need less effort to refine.

Communications to Earth will be between 15 minutes to around 30 minutes (Mars is a max of 20 minutes) but Mars can act as a communications relay for when direct Earth to Ceres communication is blocked by the Sun (solar Conjunction).

Although Sunlight on Ceres is around 10 times less sunlight than Earth, solar panels will still work well enough.