Yeah it was a radar that could collect the echo on the next rotation of Earth.
It could track celestial positions for about 2.6 hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Telescope#Research_and...
Think about a radar round-trip of 2×12 light-hours; that is 86.57 AU, twice the distance from us to Pluto. Also, the Earth orbits the Sun aside from merely rotating. That radar round-trip would be one cosmic boomerang, looking at nearly nothing.