She also spoke of her desire to "inspire the next generation of explorers."
Koch's return comes after an advert produced by the skincare brand Olay ran during an intermission in the American football Super Bowl with a call to "make space for women."
The advert featured NASA astronaut Nicole Stott and saw the company promise to donate up to $500,000 to the nonprofit Women Who Code, which works with young women seeking careers in tech and scientific fields.
This year's Super Bowl was watched by over 100 million people while advert space costs more than $5 million for a 30-second commercial.
The first woman in space was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova whose spaceflight in 1963 is still the only solo mission carried out by a woman.
But the cosmonauts Russia has sent to the ISS since expeditions began in 2000 have all been men with the exception of Yelena Serova's launch in 2014.
Both Tereshkova and Serova are now lawmakers in the Russian parliament, where they represent the ruling United Russia party.
Unlike Koch, whose stay aboard the ISS was extended, Parmitano and Skvortsov are rounding off regular six-month missions.
Parmitano handed over command of the ISS to Roscosmos' Oleg Skripochka on Tuesday.
The 43-year-old Italian posted regular shots of the Earth while aboard, highlighting the plight of the Amazon rainforest and poetically describing the Alps as "like a spinal column, never bending to time."
Four male cosmonauts have spent a year or longer in space as part of a single mission with Valery Polyakov's 437 days the overall record.
Scott Kelly holds the record for a NASA astronaut, posting 340 days at the ISS before he returned home in 2016.
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