Taking advantage of Aeolus success and of our airborne lidar system expertise, we present a new spaceborne wind lidar design for operational Aeolus follow-on missions, keeping most of the initial lidar system but relying on a single Mach–Zehnder interferometer to relax operational constraints and reduce measurement bias. System parameters are optimized. Random and systematic errors are shown to be compliant with the initial mission requirements. In addition, the system allows unbiased retrieval.