Who needs Zayn Malik?
One Direction released "Drag Me Down" overnight, its first music video since Malik quit the band. Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson filmed the video at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Ben Turner and Gabe Turner directed the shoot. "Filming took place around the NASA T-38 aircraft jets that are used by astronauts to train for spaceflight, and the NASA WB-57 High Altitude Research Aircraft, a specialized aircraft that is used for high atmosphere research work," 1D's label said in a press release. The boys also filmed in a full-scale replica of the Orion spacecraft, NASA's vehicle in development for crewed missions to deep space, wearing spacesuits designed for when astronauts launch and land.
The three-minute video shows the quartet preparing to travel to space in different parts of the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, where real astronauts train. Horan, 21, tried out the Partial Gravity Simulator, a device that imitates the partial gravity that a person would experience on the moon, an asteroid or Mars. Payne, 21, worked inside a replica of the International Space Station, a world-class laboratory that orbits 250 miles above Earth. Styles, 21, met Robonaut, a human-like robot, a model of which is now aboard the International Space Station. Last but not least, Tomlinson, 23, steered the Space Exploration Vehicle rover, a prototype vehicle design that could be used with wheels to explore the surface of Mars.
At the end, the boys strap into a special space shuttle as NASA's staff cheers them on from the control room. After the video was released, the group's fans went wild:
One Direction will release its fifth album in November.