  The InSight mission has operated on the surface of Mars for nearly two Earth
years, returning detections of the first Marsquakes. The lander also deployed a
meteorological instrument package and cameras to monitor local surface
activity. These instruments have detected boundary layer phenomena, including
small-scale vortices. These vortices register as short-lived, negative pressure
excursions and closely resemble those that could generate dust devils. Although
our analysis shows InSight encountered more than 900 vortices and collected
more than 1000 images of the martian surface, no active dust devils were
imaged. In spite of the lack of dust devil detections, we can leverage the
vortex detections and InSight's daily wind speed measurements to learn about
the boundary layer processes that create dust devils. We discuss our analysis
of InSight's meteorological data to assess the statistics of vortex and dust
devil activity. We also infer encounter distances for the vortices and,
therefrom, the maximum vortex wind speeds. Surveying the available imagery, we
place upper limits on what fraction of vortices carry dust (i.e., how many are
bonafide dust devils) and estimate threshold wind speeds for dust lifting.
Comparing our results to detections of dust devil tracks seen in space-based
observations of the InSight landing site, we can also infer thresholds and
frequency of track formation by vortices. Comparing vortex encounters and
parameters with advective wind speeds, we find evidence that high wind speeds
at InSight may have suppressed the formation of dust devils, explaining the
lack of imaged dust devils.
