One Direction blasts off with NASA-themed Drag Me Down video

Fans will profess that One Direction is out of this world, but the English-Irish boy band's new hit video actually sees the quartet training like astronauts preparing to blast off into space.

The hugely popular pop troupe released a big-budget music video for its latest single titled Drag Me Down online Thursday, with views quickly rocketing past one million.

The video follows band members Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Harry Styles as they cavort through NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston: operating rovers, climbing into simulators, monkeying around with robots and basically living out every aspiring astronaut's dream.

Watch 1D's Drag Me Down video above.

The tune (released by surprise on July 31) and the band's upcoming fifth studio album (set for release in November) is the first new material to emerge since One Direction became a quartet, following the departure of band member Zayn Malik in March.

• One Direction's Zayn Malik drops out of world tour due to 'stress'

• Zayn Malik quits One Direction, but boy band to continue with 4 members

• Zayn Malik's 1st post-One Direction demo, I Won't Mind, released

The group is currently performing across North America as part of its On the Road Again tour.

One Direction formed in 2010, after the five singers initially entered the U.K.'s The X Factor reality TV competition as solo acts. As a quintet, the lads progressed quickly and the group was promptly signed by judge and pop mogul Simon Cowell upon their third-place finish on the show.

The social media-savvy boy band the only group ever in the history of Billboard's charts to have their first four studio albums debut at No. 1 has sold more than 50 million records worldwide. One Direction videos have garnered more than three billion views on YouTube.