Ceres is a waypoint —
the stop that makes everything past it reachable.
It is the largest body in the asteroid belt: an ocean world of frozen water. That is why it keeps appearing in mission plans. You cannot carry enough fuel to reach the outer solar system, but you can carry enough to reach Ceres. Refuel there, and the far edge of the map moves.
It is a real place we have already been. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbited Ceres from 2015 to 2018 — of every dwarf planet in the solar system, it is the one we reached.
A waypoint does not belong to one mission. Every ship that passes refuels at the same place, and none of them has to be ours.
Your destination is yours to choose. We are what value passes through, and what it gains on the way.