We’d rather be astronauts than filmmakers, and if you can’t go to space yourself the next best thing is to make a video about it.

Apart from the feeling of the song fitting a launch, soaring into orbit is the opposite of being dragged down.

There’s a deeper thematic thing we wanted to find, something that represented the best of human endeavour, a heroic triumph and a struggle that didn’t involve violence, war or ‘beating’ somebody - NASA fit that idea and the image of the band perfectly.

Shooting at the Johnson Space Centre across two days in August 2015, One Direction's presence there brought thousands of fans as well as the press to the gates of NASA.

Weeks before the release of the video, social media buzz as well articles in the mainstream press brought an added air of anticipation to both the band and the Space Centre to see how they had collaborated.

Following a successful shoot and edit that created a personal, professional and mutually beneficial relationship between the band and NASA, the video for Drag Me Down was released on Vevo and YouTube on August 20, 2015 to much excitement.

The video’s release had an immediate impact on NASA with an enormous spike in numbers and influences impressions across all of their social media platforms.

Please see figures within attached presentation.

As of April 19th, 2016, Drag Me Down has received over 434 million views on YouTube.

The video has received an overwhelming reception from fans and music media outlets alike.

Winner of Best British Video BRIT Award 2016.

With a planned mission to Mars in 2030, NASA has seen an enormous spike in public interest, particularly from the harder-to-reach younger members of the population.

With renewed public interest resulting from the ‘Drag Me Down’ music video, NASA hope to capitalise on this, galvanising the next generation of space travellers.

As of Aug. 24, 2015, 4 days after release:

Over 4.8M tweets

Trending on Twitter and Instagram worldwide

14M views on YouTube

45K social media posts mentioning “NASA”

Over 350 articles mention One Direction and NASA including:

Wall Street Journal, Mashable, Billboard, ABC News,

Us Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, TIME, Perez

Hilton, Yahoo News, People Magazine,Entertainment

Tonight, Seventeen Magazine, MTV.