Well I guess most people think the space age began with Sputnik. So I guess I would put the first period as the USSR-USA space race which was mainly political but with military overtones. That tailed off with our last apollo landing and could be considered ended with the death of Skylab and Mir. Now we've genuinely entered into the comercial space age with the majority of funding for launches private communication satellites. We've also started the space exploration age with space based sensing instruments. In a 1000 years everything will probably be pretty much lumped together up until first viable colonization.

I think you can pretty much lump everything so far into one period called the satellite and exploration phase. I think the exploration phase will last a while. Maybe we'll have a media/tourism phase and that will morph into a colonization phase.

1) Space race
a) unmanned
(i) first satellite
(ii) first animals in space
b) Manned
(i) first man in space
(ii) first space walk/multiple astronauts
(iii) leaving orbit (circumnavigate the moon)
(iv) man on the moon (flags and footprints)
(v) space station

2) Exploration

(i) orbital remote sensing (Earth explorations from space, Earth sun interactions,
universe explorations(space based telescopes, etc)
(ii) solar system survey (pioneer,voyager, orbital probes),
(iii) ISS (first international efforts for significant engineering job in space)
? first non-terrestial life found?
? first extra terrestial manned (sustainable) science base

3) Commercial
a) militaristic age
b) communications satelite age
c) remote sensing (to understand earth environment/resources)
d) first commercially launched astronauts
? first privately funded commercial manned space launches (first space hotel?)

?) Colonization