they're aiming to bring 2kg back, the Soviet trip in 1976 brought 170g back

on Arecibo:

But John Mathews, an emeritus professor at the Pennsylvania State University who visited and used Arecibo regularly from 1969 through 2019, says that “deferred maintenance has been a problem for decades, and it’s only gotten worse.” He points to visible corrosion of dish components and sagging smaller cables. Those are external features, he admits, “but many of us suspected that the structure was compromised.” He adds that “the ship was sinking, and the people who could get jobs elsewhere wisely did so” after the transition to the current UCF-led management team in 2018.

In conversations with Physics Today, many Arecibo users and employees suggested that morale among employees was as frayed as the cables that broke, and some requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “The family atmosphere is totally gone,” says one. The people working there have different benefits, depending on which of three entities in the management consortium employs them. Some people took pay cuts, he says, and some do not have retirement packages.

sclerotic fucking state won't even shell out a few more million dollars a year to properly maintain an iconic, world-class scientific instrument