Ok, I don't use URL rewrite but I do know about regular expressions, so let me try to help... I'll give you a list of URLs and regexps, you stick them wherever they need to go in your .htaccess file:

FOR: /US/California-CA/
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&

FOR: /US/California-CA/CategoryName-999/ (where 999 is the category id)
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/\w+\-(\d+)/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&category=$3&

FOR: /US/California-CA/CategoryName-999/start-30/
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/\w+\-(\d+)/start\-(\d+)/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&category=$3&start=$4&

FOR: /US/California-CA/Animals-1/popular/
^/(\w{2})/\w+\-(\w{2})/\w+\-(\d+)/popular/$
/satelliteimage_results.php?country=$1&region=$2&category=$3&popular=y&

Instead of the 2 letter code, you may want to use the name and the code, like I did for the regions, so that, instead of /CH/ you have /China-CH/ (which is better)

Hope that helps...