I can hear this.
may have once had a lasting source of chemical energy
Not currently active, something from a warmer time in Ceres’ past.
Does this mean with a large enough heat source (like maybe a nuclear reactor) we could melt the ice and have liquid water on the surface?
No, there isn’t any atmosphere to keep in the water. If you heat up the ice, it will sublimate directly into gas. Since the gravity is so low, it will stream out and create a trail all around the orbit. The solar wind would blow it away from there.
There’s more to having liquid water than just temperature, pressure is needed as well.
Also Ceres might be small for a planet/moon, but it’s still huge. The amount of energy needed would also be huge. And without an atmosphere you’d also be losing a lot of energy due to it radiating out into space. I’m not a 100% sure, but I think Earth is actually an iceball from where it’s located in the solar system. It’s only due to the atmosphere it’s mostly non frozen (and if we keep pumping the CO2 and methane like we are, in the near future it won’t be frozen at all).
it will stream out and create a trail all around the orbit.
Rad!
Is it possible to create an atmosphere on something like ceres?
It would be possible, but you’d either have to continually replenish it, or create an artificial magnetic field.
With low gravity, that might be very tricky. It would limit the array of gasses we can choose from
