One Direction Go to Space Camp in ‘Drag Me Down’ Video
One Direction go from global superstars to deep space-reaching astronauts in their new video for “Drag Me Down,” which was filmed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For the track, the quartet’s first song without Zayn Malik and the first single off their upcoming fifth album, 1D go through actual astronaut training, from floating around in a partial gravity simulator to taking a Mars rover for a joyride.
The Ben and Gabe Turner-directed video plays like an updated version of The Right Stuff, as Harry Styles spends time bonding with Robonaut, a robot that mimics human activity that’s currently also aboard the International Space Station. Singer Liam Payne, for his part, tours a mock-up of the space station itself. Throughout, the foursome reconvene to perform their new single within NASA’s enormous aircraft hangers.
The visit to NASA concludes with the group offering up a glimpse at the future of space travel: 1D put on special spacesuits and load into a full-scale replica of the Orion spacecraft, an in-development vehicle aimed at providing conveyance for manned deep space missions. The video ends with One Direction being launched into space toward an unknown destination.
.@onedirection the suits fit well. Want to be our first crew? #DragMeDownVideo https://t.co/PedEpG2uLS pic.twitter.com/F8EFTxGg8v
— Orion Spacecraft (@NASA_Orion) August 21, 2015
One Direction surprised fans when they dropped “Drag Me Down” on July 31st. “[‘Drag Me Down’] is the first song from the new album that we’ve been working very, very, very hard on,” Payne said at the time. “We can’t wait for you to hear it.”