It was discovered on 18 December 1985, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona.
[1] David Hughes is a Mars-crossing asteroid, a member of the dynamically unstable group, located between the main belt and near-Earth populations, and crossing the orbit of Mars at 1.666 AU.
[1] In the SMASS classification, David Hughes is a Xe-subtype that transitions from the X-type to the very bright E-type asteroids.
Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of at least 24 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.25 magnitude (U=2-).
The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 3.92 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 14.4.