He also directed the 3-meter NASA Infrared Telescope Facility of Mauna Kea Observatory[7] and served for two years as University Vice Chancellor for Research.

His research accomplishments include demonstration of the uniform high surface temperature of Venus,[8] the discovery that Neptune has a large internal heat source while its “twin” planet Uranus does not,[9] determination of the surface composition of Pluto,[10] first ground-based measurements of the heat flow from Jupiter's volcanic moon Io,[11] discovery of the fundamental division of the asteroids into dark (primitive) and light (stony) classes,[12] and the first quantitative estimate of the cosmic impact hazard.

He was on the faculty of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa from 1969 until 1988, when he joined the senior management staff of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA.

David Morrison has held a variety of senior science management positions at NASA Headquarters in Washington and at Ames Research Center in California.

He is a popular public writer and lecturer, promoting a scientific and fact-based perspective about such topics as Emmanuel Velikovsky's pseudocosmology,[14] the evolution-creationist conflict,[15] climate change denialism,[16] and the 2012 doomsday hoax.

In interviews in 2011 and 2017, Morrison explained that he receives five emails a day about a supposed Nibiru cataclysm, an apocalyptic hoax, which he initially expected to be a short-lived phenomenon but which "keeps popping up" and is the subject of an estimated two million websites.

[5] Morrison received the Dryden Medal for research of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Carl Sagan Medal of the American Astronomical Society for public Communication, and the Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for his contributions to science education.